Responsible research assessment
Building a narrative CV (R4RI)
UKRI's Résumé for Research and Innovation has been mandatory across all UKRI funding since January 2024. Royal Society and Wellcome use closely-related formats. Here's how to structure yours.
Why narrative CVs
Traditional CVs over-weight publication counts and journal impact factors. Narrative CVs let you describe the full range of your contributions — research outputs, but also team building, mentorship, methods development, software contributions, peer review, public engagement, and contributions to research culture.
The R4RI structure (UKRI)
Four free-text modules of 250–400 words each:
- How you have contributed to the generation of knowledge — your research outputs (publications, datasets, software, models) and what they contributed.
- How you have contributed to the development of individuals — supervision, mentorship, teaching, training delivered.
- How you have contributed to the wider research community — peer review, editorial work, committee service, working group leadership, conference organisation.
- How you have contributed to broader society — public engagement, policy contributions, knowledge mobilisation, commercial translation, patient and public involvement.
How CRediT helps a narrative CV
CRediT-tagged contributions on your ORCID profile are excellent supporting evidence for narrative-CV claims. "Investigation: lead on 12 papers" and "Software: lead on 5 papers" tell a richer story than "co-author on 17 papers." When applying, link your ORCID iD in your CV and let the structured CRediT data corroborate the narrative.
Career-break inclusion
R4RI and equivalents explicitly invite disclosure of career breaks (parental, caring, illness, military service) and adjust expectations accordingly. CASRAI's mentorship-career-stages domain provides standardised vocabulary for these.
Funder formats
- UKRI R4RI — official guidance. Standard across UKRI from January 2024.
- Royal Society Résumé for Researchers — predecessor and sibling format.
- Wellcome narrative CV — Wellcome-specific adaptation.
- NIH biosketch — has a Personal Statement that functions narratively.
- ERC CV — European Research Council CV format.
- SciENcv — NSF format with narrative elements.
Where the field is going
The Coalition for Advancing Research Assessment (CoARA) — launched 2022, now 700+ signatories — commits its members to research-assessment reform. Narrative CVs are part of that. Expect more funders, hiring committees, and tenure panels to adopt similar formats in the coming years.
CASRAI Dictionary cross-references
- Responsible research assessment — vocabulary for R4RI, COARA, DORA, narrative CVs
- Mentorship, training, career stages — career-stage terms
- CRediT extensions — making hidden labour visible
The step most authors miss
Doing CRediT right? Don’t stop at the statement.
A CRediT statement credits you inside one paper. The recognition CRediT was built for happens when those roles are tied to you, persistently. Sign in with your ORCID — free — and claim your CRediT contributions on casrai.org, the home of the standard. They become a verified, portable part of your identity, not a line that disappears into one PDF.
Free: claim your contributions, then export a journal-ready CRediT statement, schema.org structured data, JATS XML, CSV or BibTeX — and preview your public profile. A membership publishes that profile publicly and verifies the journals you serve.
